Friday, February 08, 2013

The Hindu/ Footloose/ Killers of Creativity

Despite what romantics might say,
it is not easy to be creative. Creativity is not simply something some people
are born with and some aren’t. Creativity is cultivated over many years of
training, learning, and experiencing. In other words, it is not an easy task to
create something good and meaningful even in the best of circumstances. However,
the best of circumstances don’t always present themselves at opportune or
frequent moments in time. In fact, many an artist will tell you that the
revelations regarding a creative piece of work came at a decidedly inopportune
or inconvenient moment!

Moreover, there are certain
factors in the art world that make the creation of dance (and indeed other
forms of art) even more difficult. One is undoubtedly the lack of inspiration.
Inspiration can be thwarted by internal factors such as emotional distress or
laziness to actually do the hard work that creativity requires, or to go out
there and get exposed to other people’s work – in order to draw inspiration
from it. Inspiration can equally be
diminished by external factors such as the apparent celebration of mediocrity,
which may cause disheartening and discouragement; a lack of guidance in the
form of a mentor, teacher or colleagues; and the economic factor – which in
many ways limits creativity.

Let me explain this further.
Money, I think, is the second factor worth mentioning that kills creativity. Of
course, this is not unconditionally true. An art-funding body that approves
funding for a choreographer’s work can be of immeasurable help to the choreographer
because it helps him or her to be able to focus only on creating the work, rather than searching for funding. But
there is a flipside to this as well. Work that is commissioned often has
restrictions imposed on it by the organization that commissions it. Funds are
released on the condition that content, concept, vocabulary and so on – will be
determined and restricted – not by the choreographer, but by the person or organization
funding the work. In that sense, it does kill creativity.

Restrictions are imposed in other
ways too, and this particular one seems obvious as a killer of creativity –
censorship. Of course, like all of the above factors, this one is also not an
absolute evil. Censorship exists in an ideal world for good and important reasons.
But sometimes, it does contribute to the bloodless murder of creative
potential.

Censorship doesn’t happen in the
world of dance very publicly as it does in some other spheres of art – Kamal
Haasan’s ‘Vishwaroopam’ and Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’ are quite openly
censored by society. Dance appears to have escaped that censorship but perhaps
that is only the case because the world of dance is less in the public eye than
Haasan or Rushdie. Censorship does occasionally threaten to kill creativity
amongst dancers. Mallika Sarabhai, a dancer and activist in Gujarat, has faced
‘censorship’ of sorts for having viewpoints that didn’t fit well with people in
power. On a more ‘aam aadmi’ level, the
police does now impose restrictions on dancers who wish to perform publicly. Of
course, the banning of live music (which had a profoundly devastating impact on
local musicians and bands) in Bangalore as well as the banning of dancing in
pubs has caught quite a lot of media attention a few years ago. But even for
‘serious performers of dance’ in India, a very subtle form of censorship
disguises itself as a ‘Performance license’. Amongst several things that the
performer has to agree not to do, the vague statements could potentially
restrict the freedom of any kind of creative expression – the performance must
not have “any impropriety of language”, “indecency of dress, dance, movement or
gesture”, or “anything likely to excite feelings of sedition or political
discontent”. The basis on which impropriety or indecency, or in fact, the
expression of political discontent is to be measured is not mentioned anywhere,
potentially limiting the creative freedom of a dancer to speak, dance, or dress
a certain way.

So, when the best of
circumstances do not present themselves to a creative person, these killers of
creativity make the creation of art an even more difficult task than it was to
begin with.

About Me

I am a dancer. I write about what I feel are pressing issues concerning dance in India, and what my hopes and concerns as a young dancer in India are. I also seek answers to questions that I feel need to be asked, and need to be answered. I write about things that trouble and move me as a dancer. The facts in my writing are corraborated by academic material published (where I have used other people's work, it is appropriately cited) and the rest are my personal opinion. If you would like to use any of my written material, please email me at aranyanibhargav@gmail.com. Thank you.